


Each His Own Reason

by nchi_wana



Category: The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Madness 2015, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5450735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nchi_wana/pseuds/nchi_wana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris said he wouldn't join the fight, but he did. Vin wants to know why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each His Own Reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tish/gifts).



“You said there was only one.”

The cigar stopped at Chris’s lips. He stared from his seat across the fire and waited for more, but Vin’s remark drifted away like smoke and was overcome by the nocturnal chorus of crickets. But he had a feeling his companion would soon complete the thought, and waited. Vin occupied himself with cleaning his gun, muttering something about needing bullets after having used so many in the village a few days prior.

The night’s chill deepened, and the stars cut a frosty trail across the black sky. Waves of heat pulsed out from the campfire, but Chris’s back started to freeze. He wasn’t looking forward to sleeping out again. He’d done it many times throughout his life, but after spending several weeks in the village he realized he enjoyed the warmth, the food, and the company of friendly faces and conversation. If it hadn’t been for Calvera, the experience would’ve been far more pleasant. But then he hadn’t been in that village to find something pleasant, had he?

“Only one,” Vin repeated. He glanced up from his cleaning and gave a thoughtful look warning of an observation that was going to be both annoying and correct. “That was Harry, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Chris replied. He took a drag on his cigar and watched as one of the logs in the fire popped and sent sparks twirling. Their winking lights spiraled upward to vanish. He had a strange thought then, that the sky was filled with the embers of campfires from countless millennia. Men like him from ages past sat under the night sky to see the same stars—

“Funny,” Vin said. “At the time, I thought it was you.”

Chris tapped the ashes off his cigar. He’d rather be thinking about embers and stars right now, but knowing Vin, the topic wasn’t going to drop.

“It wasn’t,” Chris said.

Vin persisted. “Now I remember. When we picked up Lee, it was six.” He rubbed his jaw as he recalled. “Then it was Chico. That made seven.” He went quiet and seemed to be calculating the numbers in is head, and deep lines creased his brow. “Well, between me and Chico, which one were you?”

Chris knew where this was going. It took a little effort to keep from smiling.

“When did you decide?” Vin asked. “You didn’t plan on coming, did you?”

“No.”

“But you changed your mind.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Same reason as you.”

Vin paused. “You didn’t want to be a grocery clerk?”

“Did you?”

His companion chuckled and grinned. Putting his gun away, Vin began fiddling with his hat and observed the fire lick away at a charred log. After a short stretch he said, “There wasn’t much in that town.”

“There isn’t much anywhere,” said Chris, “not anymore.”

“Is that why you decided to sign on?”

It was clear Vin wasn’t going to let the subject go. Why was he so curious about it, anyway?

Chris reached over and placed a few extra branches into the fire. His response was slow in coming. He preferred to craft his responses after a period of thoughtful consideration.

The horses milled nearby, the light of the small blaze throwing a yellowish cast to their coats. Beyond the ring of firelight was a vast landscape shrouded in night, wide and lonely enough to make a man desperate.

Chris used to be fond of the solitude. The stars had been enough to give him company, teasing his mind with wonder and curiosity. Now, however, he found it didn’t quite have the same effect anymore.

“Sotero was right,” he said. “We have no sons, no daughters, and no wives. What did we know about their struggle, what it’s like to live the way they do, to make the choices they have to make? I didn’t know. I had but myself to care for. I had nothing to lose, except my own life.”

Vin listened as he bowed his head, his arms propped on his knees and hat dangling from his fingers.

“Those men came to me with more courage than I,” Chris added. “They would risk their lives to protect everything they loved, yet I, with nothing to lose, would not go with them. But I asked myself why. Why, when I had the power to do more?”

“So it had nothing to do with the twenty dollars?” said Vin.

Cigar smoke drifted out between Chris’s lips. “No. It was Calvera. The more I learned of him, the more I hated him. He was a bully and a coward, preying on the weak, so I thought to create for him an equal opponent. For the village I could do at least that.”

A pack of coyotes sent up a cacophony of yips somewhere out in the black wilderness. The crickets chirred in the still air, but silence descended between the two companions as they ruminated over their conversation. Chris puffed on his cigar and Vin examined a tear on the brim of his hat.

“I wanted to know if I was the only one,” Vin said at length. “The twenty dollars sounded good, but after a while...” He smiled to himself. “I wasn’t meaning to do anything noble.”

“No one was,” Chris replied, “not at first. But each man had his own reason.”

“Even Harry?”

The corners of Chris’s mouth twitched. “I didn’t say they were _noble_ reasons.”

“But he came back.”

Chris allowed a grin. “You heard what he said. He thought there was gold.”

Vin shook his head in amusement. “If for Harry it was gold, then for Chico it was glory.”

“And us somewhere in the middle. Where do you fit in?”

The coyotes echoed through the night once more and faded away as the pack sped off on the hunt. Vin’s voice was soft as he spoke, rising just above the crickets. “The same place as you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the movie again and saw how after Britt decided to join, Chris signaled they now had five, but by then he had picked up Vin, Harry, and O'Reilly. With Britt it should've only made four, so at some point between Vin and Britt, Chris had signed on.


End file.
